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Tim Kahl

The Laughing Gas Revolution

The ear makes a quadrillion calculations per second or maybe that is some Colorado supercomputer. The eyes leap at aging peers as a symbol of freedom. Mouths renew their enthusiasm for high performance vowels. The holidays gleam with teachings and videos of aluminum trees that spin and reform the lighting in the cubicles. Oxytocin hits the market, the spray is inhaled, and the blinking grid delivers a Hallelujah to a flight of designated speakers. Hallelujah they shout and the multidisciplinary thinking continues among registered users. And the ears are full of health, the eyes glisten with the laughing gas revolution, the mouths move forward faster, into position to receive the new settings for the old intelligence.

Truth to an Inch

Whatever is said by the solver to the alpha rat
repeats the pivot in the typical riddle

outside in the avoid room some stiff competition
sloshes in the sea, sharing the salts of humans

a brass band already bloated trickles down the coast
merchants agree to march on the original island

made of concrete and carbon and fantastic muck
surviving the winter in the horse’s stomach

the orange flag is hoisted to defend against
a hundred different spirit kisses and whistles

dependent on a river of kin and their traditions
no latrines no months of medication

and painting the soft sculpture in mint
to prove the covenant of the triple acrylic

an institution troubled by virgins and toxins
filmed through truth to an inch of indifference

the tower hovers ten miles from bathing believers
its signature mistaken for a grave of manikins

enjoying the color of the academy in spring
instead of a roadside rendering in Yosemite

Tim Kahl is the author of Possessing Yourself (CW Books 2009) and The Century of Travel (CW Books, 2012). His work has been published in Prairie Schooner, Indiana Review, Ninth Letter, Notre Dame Review, The Journal, Parthenon West Review, and many other journals in the U.S. He appears as Victor Schnickelfritz at the poetry and poetics blog The Great American Pinupand the poetry video blog Linebreak Studios. He is also editor of Bald Trickster Press and Clade Song. He is the vice president and events coordinator of The Sacramento Poetry Center.

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About Posit Editor

Susan Lewis (susanlewis.net) is the editor of Posit (positjournal.com) and the author of ten books and chapbooks, including Zoom, winner of the 2017 Washington Prize, Heisenberg's Salon, This Visit, and State of the Union. Her poetry has appeared in such places as The Awl, Berkeley Poetry Review, Boston Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Cimarron, Gargoyle, The Journal, New American Writing, The New Orleans Review, Prelude, Raritan, Seneca Review, So to Speak, Verse, Verse Daily, and VOLT.